


Rebirth

by chaineddove



Category: Loveless
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-01
Updated: 2006-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaineddove/pseuds/chaineddove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over the cycle of seasons, Yuiko heals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> _"Summer move forward and stitch me the fabric of fall.  
>  Wrap life in the brilliance of death to humble us all..."_  
> -Vienna Teng, "Drought"
> 
> Extra points to anyone who gets the music reference.

The summer is dying the day she finally confesses to him, the gold of the falling leaves framing his face as he looks at her, surprised and a little uncomfortable. _Oh,_ he says, and then, _Yuiko, I’m sorry._

_It’s all right,_ she tells him, and she smiles. The summer is dying around them, the wind is tearing the leaves from the trees, and he stands there in the middle of it, and he doesn’t know what to say. _It’s all right, Ritsuka-kun,_ she tells him again, because it is, really. She has always known they would end up here someday. There are tears glittering on her lashes, and the world seen through them is strange and a little foreign — a blur of gold and red and the violet of his stricken, apologetic eyes.

***

In the winter she curls under the kotatsu and watches the snow fall outside the windows. The comforting smell of her mother’s stew wafts in from the kitchen, along with strains of piano music, the same CD she always plays while cooking. The notes flutter on the air like summer birds, unaffected by the cold. The clock ticks on the wall, out of rhythm with the cheerfully warbling piano. The days of her winter holiday pass like that, blurring together.

She falls asleep and dreams that the snow falls and falls until everything is buried beneath it. She feels a curious sort of peace thinking, there is nothing but this, nowhere but here, now. Someday, when the snow melts, the world will be reborn white and clean and she can start everything over.

***

Spring battles its way into existence, bursting through the snow and the white and gray with color. Fortune telling is all the rage at her junior high these days, and she spends her lunch hours bent over glossy decks of painfully new Tarot cards. She lays them out one by one, heart fluttering a little, thinking, what if?

Death comes, again and again, unforgiving in his dark cloak. She cries and one of the girls pats her shoulder and tells her, _Don’t be scared. That card just means change._

He comes to class without his ears one day, and he’s not like the first girl in their class to lose hers — he doesn’t hide his face, meeting the curious gazes with a sort of proud defiance instead. They don’t talk so much anymore, but she smiles at him and he smiles uncertainly back before taking his seat two rows away.

***

She joins the choir, not because she’s ever had any aspirations to music, but because the girl who sits next to her in math loves it and it seems like something to do. She’s no good at it, really, but there is a sort of freedom in closing her eyes and letting the sound come out. She catches Yayoi watching her from the tenor section and wonders if he feels this way too, so curiously empty. She isn’t sad anymore, and she isn’t happy. She simply is. She thinks, maybe she’s just waiting.

She opens the English madrigal they’re meant to be studying and tries to make sense of the notes on the page. _The 'little death',_ their teacher says very delicately, _meant something very different in Renaissance Europe._ The choir erupts in giggles and titters and she looks at the music again, wishing she spoke better English so she could understand.

Maybe it simply means that when one thing dies, something else can be born, like the summer has been reborn, hot and fragrant as the year before. The trees are vividly green and the sky is so blue she thinks she could touch it if she could just reach a little higher. Yayoi catches up to her just after rehearsal as she’s attempting it, reaching her hand into the endless azure in hopes of grasping something. “Yuiko-san,” he says, and his ears are twitching wildly with obvious nerves when she turns to face him. “Yuiko-san, would you like to walk home with me today?”

She has to look up at him now, she realizes. Some things change. He looks ready to cry, if she says no. It is comforting to realize some things don’t. She smiles because the day calls for it, because everything is bright and alive, and tells him, “I’d love to.”


End file.
